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La Llorona: The Crying Woman

The Servant Girl Annihilator worked in Austin in (IIRC) the 1890s, and to the best of my knowledge left no ghosts. Austin is a lovely place, but doesn't crawl with folklore the way San Antonio does.
 
Ah yeh Austin. Would like my next trip to the US to be Texas covering Dallas, San Antonio and then driving on to New Orleans. Not sure how feasible that is without having looked on a map!
 
Well, that's a pretty awkward itinerary unless you've got a lot of vacation time. A week will not cut it. Do it in the spring (March/April is best) to catch the wildflowers and the best available weather. Fall will just confuse you, summer would kill a Brit, and winter's only a month long.

Dallas proper, to be honest, is not particularly attractive to the casual visitor, and even most people who live there don't love it; however, Forth Worth is an attractive town and all part of the same metroplex. Presumably you have a particular interest that would take you to DFW, so I suggest contacting somebody with knowledge of that interest and ask for recommendations and directions. DFW is notoriously difficult to get around in and you'll be at a disadvantage without some sort of native guide.

From DFW to San Antonio is a straight shot of not quite 300 miles down IH 35, which Yahoo Maps indicates is a four and a half hour drive; however, Yahoo Maps assumes that you make no stops and are going the speed limit at all times. This will not be true, as even if you don't want to stop at any of the interesting locations on the way or break for lunch, you will be going straight through Austin. Unless you hit it at the perfect time of day, this will add an additional hour to your trip. If you hit it during rush hour (3-5 pm) you might as well get off the highway, stretch your legs, and take in some sights or some food. From Austin it's about an hour and a half to downtown San Antonio, followed by another hour or so of getting lost even if your hotel is right off the highway. By then you'll be exhausted and cross, so allow a full day for that leg.

In San Antonio, you should allow at least two days to look around; more depending on your particular tourism pleasures. If you're a history buff a three-day intensive might do it. (Call me. Seriously. I'm in the book and I can native guide you. I know the stories. Just tell me the type of stories that interest you most and I'll walk you through them.)

From San Antonio, it's another straight shot east on IH 10 to New Orleans. Yahoo calls this a 13-hour trip, but again you have to allow for intervening geography. IH 10 goes straight through downtown Houston, whose traffic makes Austin look like a small town on Sunday. Unless you are interested in seeing Houston, I suggest planning your trip so that you go through at 1 in the morning. If you want any beach time, however, Texas Gulf beaches have it all over Louisiana ones, and this is the leg of the trip to plan for that. Galveston isn't far off the route.

I haven't been to New Orleans since Katrina, but it's at least as interesting architecturally, historically, and Forteanly as San Antonio; and it has a local music scene, which San Antonio lacks. (Unless you like conjunto or Tejano music.) So you'd want at least as much time there as in SA.

Since it's only an 8-hour trip between New Orleans and Dallas, if you don't particularly want anything that's only available to you on IH 10, I would recommend starting either in San Antonio or in New Orleans and having Dallas as the middle leg of the trip. Both cities have international airports, so you'd be able to get home just as well as from DFW.
 
Yikes!

I only really want to go to Dallas for Dealey Plaza. Guess a flight between SA and NO would be better.

Ah well, it will be a while anyway. The West Coast Triangle has wiped me out so it will be a good few years before I can afford to take another big road trip.

Thanks for the info though!
 
McAvennie_ said:
In a roundabout way it has also led me to discover the phenomenon of 'crybaby bridges'.
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I've doubtless mentioned this before, but from my experience it seems to be "La Llorona" in Hispanic areas, "Crybaby Bridge" in non-Hispanic.

Ohio has at least six "Crybaby Bridges," all of them - of course - the one, true, only, original, real, authentic, certified, guaranteed CB.

I am skeptic enough (yes, even me) to suspect that "crying" sounds are caused by evening winds being honed through the bridge rigging.
 
Reviving this old thread because of a story a friend once told me. He is a local cop, and he and his partner were patrolling the park at night as part of their duties. The park has some secluded lanes down near the river that all needed to be checked, so they went down to look things over. It was about 3 AM and there was no one else around.

Suddenly, he and his partner both heard an "unearthly" (as he described it) screeching wail coming down the river. He said that the sound was so frightening it made all his hair stand on end. The sound was coming toward them, fast, so despite them being cops who, you know, might be expected to investigate this sort of thing, they ran back to their patrol car and sat there terrified until they could reasonably leave without getting in trouble.

They were both convinced the sound had been La Llorona. My friend is both Hispanic and Catholic, if that has anything to do with it (per questions raised earlier in this thread).

I myself have never heard anything like that down on the river. Nor has my sister, despite living for years near the infamous Woman Hollering Creek (supposedly named for La Llorona) outside of San Antonio. But perhaps we were just lucky.

There is one of the ubiquitous Cry Baby Creeks out on an isolated county road near Luling (not far from Ottine swamp, with its mysterious "thing"). The story with this one is that the infant was lost in a car accident, and the sound of crying is triggered by breaking glass. I've never been down there, but my cousin who grew up in that area has. Given how isolated it is out there, I'm guessing that going down to the creek to smash glass was the most exciting thing going for teenagers on a Saturday night.
 
[Reviving this old thread because of a story a friend once told me. He is a local cop, and he and his partner were patrolling the park at night as part of their duties. The park has some secluded lanes down near the river that all needed to be checked, so they went down to look things over. It was about 3 AM and there was no one else around.
They were both convinced the sound had been La Llorona. My friend is both Hispanic and Catholic, if that has anything to do with it (per questions raised earlier in this thread).

If there is a La Llorona I know she's in San Antone. Just as I know if there's a Vanishing Hitchhiker, she's at White Rock Lake in Dallas. I know these things to be true; I learned these facts at slumber parties.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
If there is a La Llorona I know she's in San Antone. Just as I know if there's a Vanishing Hitchhiker, she's at White Rock Lake in Dallas. I know these things to be true; I learned these facts at slumber parties.
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I think you should contact police about the location of that escaped maniac with a hook for a hand, forthwith.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
If there is a La Llorona I know she's in San Antone. Just as I know if there's a Vanishing Hitchhiker, she's at White Rock Lake in Dallas. I know these things to be true; I learned these facts at slumber parties.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's how I found out about you-know-who, the witch bird who can take human form...
3582386143_509bfce9c4.jpg

While this stencil was found in the Dallas/Fort Worth area (so watch out, Gerda!) the slumber party stories made it clear that it could turn up anywhere, at any time.

But I know for a fact that the chicken-footed devil-man turned up at the Fiesta Ballroom in Seguin. ;P
 
Ulalume said:
Yep, that's how I found out about you-know-who, the witch bird who can take human form...
View attachment 2242
While this stencil was found in the Dallas/Fort Worth area (so watch out, Gerda!) the slumber party stories made it clear that it could turn up anywhere, at any time.

But I know for a fact that the chicken-footed devil-man turned up at the Fiesta Ballroom in Seguin. ;P
Click to expand...
That stencil's wonderful Fortean Worthiana; I've never seen it. . . yet.
 
She's possibly been captured again on film, or possibly not. Once again, the Internet is divided. I'll leave you all to make up your own minds...
An eerie video clip of the legendary 'wailing ghost' of Latin American folklore has recently appeared online.
The footage, which has been picked up by numerous Spanish language news outlets, was reportedly filmed in Cordoba, Colombia and shows a female figure at the top of a large tree.

The woman appears to move her arms around as though dancing or performing some sort of ritual.

In the background, a dog can be heard howling mournfully over and over again.

Little seems to be known about the circumstances surrounding the video, however some have declared the mystery figure to be 'La Llorona' - an infamous wailing ghost.
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Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/333519/la-llorona-captured-on-film-in-colombia
Original Source (Spanish with Google translation): https://translate.google.com/transl...gura-medio-del-bosque-afirman-la-llorona.html
 
Yeah, you can see the tree shake when she bobs down, then she bobs up again. The sound effects are quite good, but this is not an immaterial ghost, and not so many ghouls and zombies climb trees, last time I checked the folklore. Now if she had simply flown from off the top of the tree I would be more ambivalent, but I'm calling this one a hoax.
 
There has been a lot of sightings of La Llorona through the years. A few caught on camera, whatever it is.

 
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